Having multiple victory conditions is for many L5R player a core feature of the game, so this should stay in some form or another. So, let's talk about it.

Military

Of course having a military victory condition is just fitting for a warrior culture that Rokugan is. But losing provinces was a vicious cycle for the player who lost them and thus always a problem in the game. Luckily I think that could be fixed by no longer destroying the pronces of the other players, but instead implementing territories that can be conqured in the middle of the table. This could be territories in the colonies, or the lands between the clans (the 4th Edition of the RPG, separated the clan lands stronger from each other, leaving my room between them over which the clans could fight). Or, in the Card Types thread Kyoden Kurosora also had the idea of the provinces not being used for card draw of dynasty cards, but as strongholds which grant special ponuses as long as they remain in play.

Political

The classic honour victory also always had its issues. First that it directly opposed the dishonour victory, and thus could lead to very long games, which is bad for a tournament envirnment, and was often not very fun for both sides. So, I think it should become a political victory condition. But of course playing honour and dishonour should still have a distinct feel to it, but in the end both could lead to political victories. Also, the abstract count to 40 should be probably replaced with a more objective oriented method, but if the objective that one has to achieve is laying as objective cards on the table, or are more like secret agendas one plays from the deck is something that has to be determined, but it could be different objectives for an honourable political victory and a dishonourable political victory.

Enlightenment

And the third of the victory conditions, also comes with its own baggage, how could it be any different. First, having the five rings in decks means the deck size is a factor, so with a possible change to maybe just one deck (instead of the two decks L5R had), it would mean it becomes harder to get the rings into the hand in teh first place and thus the requirement of cards that let you search for certain other cards increases (even more so then it already was). Such meta cards are often a problem in themselves, so maybe the objectives for enlightenment victory should not come out of a deck in the first place, but be open available in every game. Second the objectives themselves always have been an issue, AEG never got them balanced, and too often certain clans could not really even try to build an enlightenment deck, since they missed Shugenja, Monks, or Duelists. I think this has to change, the attunement to the five elements should be possible for everyone, so the five objectives should be possible with a wider variety of decks, but still challenging to pull off.

Other

The game has a history of additional vicory conditions from event cards. I think this should also be honoured, but is not needed to outright start with such tardition in the core game, but it should be kept in mind for later cycles.

So, anyone else with ideas regarding how the vicory conditions should be in the new game, or why it is important that certain things are kept like they have been?

A problem of games that run through the time limit.

A problem of one or both who want to continue the game.

Stalling comes in many ways. (Hateful people who I feel shouldn't be playing the game)

The above issues might want to be taken into consideration as they make these victory conditions as well as the cards that come out.

Don't forget sensei victory conditions. Love Letter started it =)

I somehow want to see a game where the courtiers stay at court and the military personnel stay at the battle field. But that is a entirely different concept altogether so I wont push it =)

Enlightenment

And the third of the victory conditions, also comes with its own baggage, how could it be any different. First, having the five rings in decks means the deck size is a factor, so with a possible change to maybe just one deck (instead of the two decks L5R had), it would mean it becomes harder to get the rings into the hand in teh first place and thus the requirement of cards that let you search for certain other cards increases (even more so then it already was). Such meta cards are often a problem in themselves, so maybe the objectives for enlightenment victory should not come out of a deck in the first place, but be open available in every game. Second the objectives themselves always have been an issue, AEG never got them balanced, and too often certain clans could not really even try to build an enlightenment deck, since they missed Shugenja, Monks, or Duelists. I think this has to change, the attunement to the five elements should be possible for everyone, so the five objectives should be possible with a wider variety of decks, but still challenging to pull off.

So, anyone else with ideas regarding how the vicory conditions should be in the new game, or why it is important that certain things are kept like they have been?

Traditionally, only one who seeks enlightenment can find it, but the contrapositive has also been true at times: enlightenment found some who were not seeking it.

I don't think it should be easy for anyone to just do it, though.

I think we're likely to see a unified victory condition with a few paths to achieve it. An example of this in FFG's library would be the Star Wars Death Star Dial, which can be advance by holding the force (which clicks the dial 2x per turn instead of 1x per turn) or by destroying objectives (which clicks the dial 1x per objective destroyed, including the current one destroyed, so 1x, then 2x, then 3x). When the dial hits 12, Dark Side wins. It doesn't matter how it gets there.

From another thread:

Like a new five rings enlightenment thing, where the different rings echo the old victory conditions, and it's first to 3 out of 5 wins.

2 of them Military oriented

2 honor oriented (or politics, whatever)

1 something else. Maybe reflective of enlightenment somehow.

That way pure mil decks can plan to win 2 and grab the enlightenment rings for the win.

Same for pure honor.

Balanced decks (perhaps known colloquially as "enlightened" decks) can grab any of them, but are not as good at Mil as pure military, and not as good at honor as pure honor.

I'm not sure if it would be best to have the rings be mutually exclusive in this model. i.e., once I get Fire, you can't get Fire, but I suspect it would be better if all 5 remain available to all players regardless. That way, the rules don't have to be different in multiplayer, and the Mil deck that gets its rings *first* doesn't auto-win.

I don't really understand why such a need for a change in the game mate ... i've played honnor/dishonnor, military and enligtement and even see a Lion win through the enligtement victory, so what ? I've got a lot of fun.

Not every clan could win in each way because the story. Crab are keeping the wall, the scorpions are there to avoid one clan claiming the throne for eg so you can't change that without messing about with the story.

I've read here 'courtier at court and military at battlefield' it has for me little sense because you'll have then a deck that would be ruined at the first battle (if you play courtier).

I don't want a game in wich i'm only gardening my deck to win, i would like to interract with the other player, not like a crane honor bomb that play two turns alone in his corner...

As a reminder, the game have 20 years and for this period there no major change, why change now ? Once change, it maybe impossible to turn back.

Some people suggested to make the Rings something outside of the decks like the Imperial Favor.

With the suggestion from BD Flory struggle points again sprang to mind.

Water and Earth would be the Military rings standing for Assault and Defense.

Fire and Air would be the Court rings standing for Dueling and Politics.

Void would then stand for Enlightenment.

The idea would be that you have two primary victory conditions the Military and the Court victory.

By winning 7 struggles in the respective category (one win for each virtue), you win the game.

The Void ring would not advance any victory condition but winning a struggle there lets you draw cards, helping you to archive your win condition.

So a pure Military deck would try to be good in Water, Earth and Void the Court Deck would try to be good in Fire, Air and Void.

A Court Military Switch Deck could focus on Fire, Air and Water for example. Trying to gain the advantage in Court if that does not work out, switch to Military instead trying to defend the Court struggles.

The Enlightenment victory is reached when you win a struggle for each ring.

So only 5 struggles are needed in total, but obviously your deck must be very diverse and you will probably have trouble gaining a Fire victory against a pure Court deck.

Some people suggested to make the Rings something outside of the decks like the Imperial Favor.

With the suggestion from BD Flory struggle points again sprang to mind.

You've used the phrase, "struggle points," a couple times like it's something we should recognize. Is it from another game?

Anyway, obviously it depends on how difficult and involved the specific tasks are, but I feel like requiring 7 achievements (or whatever) for victory might be too many. It's not a great comparison, because we don't know what new L5R looks like yet, but even where Netrunner requires 7 agenda points or SW 12 points on the dial, there are trivially easy ways to score multiple points or clicks in one fell swoop.

I think that I would rather they simply made the individual tasks slightly more difficult than set them up such that you could easily achieve several points in a turn.

The 5 Rings connection would be pretty apparent, IMO. Seven samurai virtues is a little more obscure (especially if we no longer have exactly 7 clans), perhaps too much so to resonate as a victory condition.

I think we're likely to see a unified victory condition with a few paths to achieve it. An example of this in FFG's library would be the Star Wars Death Star Dial, which can be advance by holding the force (which clicks the dial 2x per turn instead of 1x per turn) or by destroying objectives (which clicks the dial 1x per objective destroyed, including the current one destroyed, so 1x, then 2x, then 3x). When the dial hits 12, Dark Side wins. It doesn't matter how it gets there.

From another thread:

Like a new five rings enlightenment thing, where the different rings echo the old victory conditions, and it's first to 3 out of 5 wins.

2 of them Military oriented

2 honor oriented (or politics, whatever)

1 something else. Maybe reflective of enlightenment somehow.

That way pure mil decks can plan to win 2 and grab the enlightenment rings for the win.

Same for pure honor.

Balanced decks (perhaps known colloquially as "enlightened" decks) can grab any of them, but are not as good at Mil as pure military, and not as good at honor as pure honor.

I'm not sure if it would be best to have the rings be mutually exclusive in this model. i.e., once I get Fire, you can't get Fire, but I suspect it would be better if all 5 remain available to all players regardless. That way, the rules don't have to be different in multiplayer, and the Mil deck that gets its rings *first* doesn't auto-win.

This is beautiful. I honestly just petted this post on my phone a few times, just because. I mean, it distills the core elements of the game into a single, completely understandable win condition, and helps justify the title being a reference to the five rings that, in the original game, often weren't all present in players' decks. I'm not saying the game has to be a slave to its title, but if people completely unfamiliar with a franchise called Legend of the Five Rings decide to go into it, they'll go into it expecting the five rings (and the legend thereof) to be central to the game and its setting.

Well call them missions or whatever. Have seen the concept first in spycraft and later in CoC.

Struggle points is just a neutral term that I picked up and stuck with I find it pretty self explanatory. The points where you struggle with your opponent.

I am not sure if the term comes from any specific game. I never bothered to check.

You have 5 rings in the middle.

You can obviously score 2 military victory points and 2 court victory points per round.

Working under the impression that each ring can only be visited once during a round.

If you win you get the point. If your opponent wins he gets the point.

Military struggles (Earth and Water) would use Force as reference attribute.

Court struggles (Air and Fire) would use Chi as reference attribute.

Void perhaps the sum of both values?

This gives you 4 rounds minimum to win the game, 7 at maximum (if nothing odd happens) which I find reasonable.

Other

The game has a history of additional vicory conditions from event cards. I think this should also be honoured, but is not needed to outright start with such tardition in the core game, but it should be kept in mind for later cycles.

So, anyone else with ideas regarding how the vicory conditions should be in the new game, or why it is important that certain things are kept like they have been?

May I be brave enough to suggest that, given prior FFG games, the decking of your opponent (opponent running out of cards in their deck/decks) would be another manner of 'victory?'

Assuming they keep two decks, it seems like decking dynasty would be crippling. Decking fate, less so. But they might just simplify it to be the same for both, assuming they don't simplify down to a single deck.

I would like to see dishonor take on a bigger role. It stays a Scorpion niche and rightfully so. But having more support for other clans as well. Many times you see corrupted decks designed to run right to the dishonor limit for a military victory and I see no problem with that, but I want to see it run more of a gambit vs other clans besides Scorpion. Scorpion dishonor is set up to tank even the highest honor running decks.

I like Game of Thrones' Red, Green. Blue system but I don't want to see a similar one for L5R. It could work, but both system are already VERY similar, including victory conditions.

Assuming they keep two decks, ...

Um, imo, L5R can be done with a single deck design in mind. I'm in the minority, I think.

I would like to see dishonor take on a bigger role. It stays a Scorpion niche and rightfully so. But having more support for other clans as well. Many times you see corrupted decks designed to run right to the dishonor limit for a military victory and I see no problem with that, but I want to see it run more of a gambit vs other clans besides Scorpion. Scorpion dishonor is set up to tank even the highest honor running decks.

Any victory condition that is the primary province of a single clan probably shouldn't be a victory condition, IMO. Whether that means cutting dishonor or bringing other clans up to Scorpion's level at playing dishonor, fine. But no clan should be able to point to any victory condition and say, "We are better at that than anyone else in the game."

If you have 7 clans, I think *at least* 4 should be competitive in each victory condition, assuming 3-4 are available. If there are only 2, then everyone should probably have a real shot at both.

Assuming they keep two decks, ...

Um, imo, L5R can be done with a single deck design in mind. I'm in the minority, I think.

I agree. But we have to make certain assumptions when discussing things.

Obviously, if there's only one deck, then distinguishing between them for determining which one makes you lose by decking out doesn't matter.

I would like to see dishonor take on a bigger role. It stays a Scorpion niche and rightfully so. But having more support for other clans as well. Many times you see corrupted decks designed to run right to the dishonor limit for a military victory and I see no problem with that, but I want to see it run more of a gambit vs other clans besides Scorpion. Scorpion dishonor is set up to tank even the highest honor running decks.

Any victory condition that is the primary province of a single clan probably shouldn't be a victory condition, IMO. Whether that means cutting dishonor or bringing other clans up to Scorpion's level at playing dishonor, fine. But no clan should be able to point to any victory condition and say, "We are better at that than anyone else in the game."

If you have 7 clans, I think *at least* 4 should be competitive in each victory condition, assuming 3-4 are available. If there are only 2, then everyone should probably have a real shot at both.

AEG tried, with various success, at having other clans do their own thing with the various avenues of victory. It's honestly difficult to do and even more difficult to manage. I'll look at some previews for a set and wonder why the heck didn't clan X get support with a theme they've had going for a while.

Assuming they keep two decks, ...

Um, imo, L5R can be done with a single deck design in mind. I'm in the minority, I think.

I agree. But we have to make certain assumptions when discussing things.

Obviously, if there's only one deck, then distinguishing between them for determining which one makes you lose by decking out doesn't matter.

Wholly agreed.

Not knowing what direction FFG is going with (and they not knowing either, at this point) is what I was working off of.

AEG tried, with various success, at having other clans do their own thing with the various avenues of victory. It's honestly difficult to do and even more difficult to manage. I'll look at some previews for a set and wonder why the heck didn't clan X get support with a theme they've had going for a while.

Hopefully FFG can do better. It may require modification to how the victory conditions are achieved, which honestly is probably going to happen anyway.

But if they can't figure out how to make dishonor work for more than 1 clan as a victory condition? It should just be a control strategy (or something) instead. I'm not saying it shouldn't be in the game, but an avenue to victory existing for the sake of a single clan is pretty ridiculous, IMO.

AEG tried, with various success, at having other clans do their own thing with the various avenues of victory. It's honestly difficult to do and even more difficult to manage. I'll look at some previews for a set and wonder why the heck didn't clan X get support with a theme they've had going for a while.

Hopefully FFG can do better. It may require modification to how the victory conditions are achieved, which honestly is probably going to happen anyway.

But if they can't figure out how to make dishonor work for more than 1 clan as a victory condition? It should just be a control strategy (or something) instead. I'm not saying it shouldn't be in the game, but an avenue to victory existing for the sake of a single clan is pretty ridiculous, IMO.

I think removing the whole elimination by dishonor would solve the problem. I always sided more with the idea that dishonor was more of a control scheme than anything else. Sure, they could come out with an event-like card that could win you the game if your opponent is at a certain dishonor level.

Other

The game has a history of additional vicory conditions from event cards. I think this should also be honoured, but is not needed to outright start with such tardition in the core game, but it should be kept in mind for later cycles.

So, anyone else with ideas regarding how the vicory conditions should be in the new game, or why it is important that certain things are kept like they have been?

May I be brave enough to suggest that, given prior FFG games, the decking of your opponent (opponent running out of cards in their deck/decks) would be another manner of 'victory?'

There was a way to do exactly that. There was event Doom of the Dark Lord that destroyed provinces if you had to draw a fate card, but could not due to deck depletion. And Abandoning the Fortunes killed stuff if you could not refill provinces due to a depleted dynasty deck. I had a buddy who ran a Ninja deck in Jade whose win con was those two cards.

Doom of the Dark Lord

http://imperialassembly.com/oracle/#cardid=2191,#hashid=f8c1e69cc97ad9431e611192f6479277,#cardcount=4

Abandoning the Fortunes

http://imperialassembly.com/oracle/#cardid=105,#hashid=88801275059e5be43fbf1a381fb741f0,#cardcount=2

^

I love vcards like those. It gives you a unique way to build your deck and think outside the box. Now I really need to pick up a copy of Abandoning the Fortunes and Doom of the Dark Lord for my Modern/Bigdeck decks.

There was a fairly neat win condition in Burning Sands that was similar to Doom of the Dark Lord. If you could outlast your opponent so they run out of water tokens, you win the game.

I also really loved stuff that gave you a win condition such as An Empire of Madness or Yoritomo Ascends .

I'm the opposite. I really don't like card-driven win conditions.

File under, "someone's sure to be disappointed!"

As stated on others subjects/posts it might be nice to keep max 3 victory conditions for sake of simplification.
On the other hand, earning victory points per elementary ring, for example, might be fun as well and promote the L5R ambiance.

Did several attempts at a love letter deck.

Kinda remember how many times I double face palmed myself every time I saw Sacred Temple across the board... These are what friends are for.

Ok Victory Conditions

I really would like to have more than 1 ofc. I think I still would go for the classic military but also would dropp the tradiotnal honor/dishonor and change it to political. I still want to keep enlightment.

So lets see how I would go for this.

Millitary

I really dislike how the current victory is achivied cause while destroying provinces is a good story element it will not do much for the fun or the balance of the game cause each province you lose is a actually resource you lose and could be compared to land destruction in Magic the gathering, which also was such a negative exp for the players that it is very limited by now.

And while there are decks they can compensate this to a certain degree most of the decks can´t and if we go for the worst case scenario of a turn 2 lethal attack one a province form a rush deck the game goes south very fast for the defender.

Therefore I would like a victory condition which not effects the actual recources of the player but let him play the game to the end on a euqal level.

This is why i would not go for provinces as goal for the military victory but more for actual missions or conflicts which could be represented as extra cards where both factions can asign people to and fight over it.

This would also open up design space for a intresting mechnic to look for who is the attacker and who is the defender and also gives space to design conditions for both sides.

Political

This condition is a number you can get when you either get or lose honor through different effects on cards. This change is necassary to remove the honor/dishonor stalmate without buring down one of the two strategies and even add a new

way of strategy the honor/dishonor switch to the game again. I would sugest a 1 to 1 transition of the honor/dishonor points into political points and therefore a Target Number like 50 or 60 to win the game. The political track onyl can go up and not down but to give people a possibilty to counteract this and not only make it to asolitaire race against other political decks there could be cards which stop the gain for some turns oreven steal it to get it for yourself so each other strategy should have some options to slow the potical runner down a bit or counteract against it.

Enlightment

The enlightment Vicotry is a bit complicated cause it worked with the rings in the past. I think I would like this to change. While I really like the rings and their effects building a deck which soley has the purpose to find them and if it don´t does it in time is not that desireable if we compare it to the 2 other winconditions which are less reliant on special cards in you deck to take effect.

Therefore I would like to have a enlightment victory condition where the rings are extra cards which are present on the table from the start of the game and who ever fullfills the condition on every card first will get the enlightment victory. Yes thiw would mean the cards need to be balanced in a way that not each political and military deck also can menange the enlightment victory but it would also reduce the times you draw you last ring 1 turn to late.

I also would give the enlightment people speical actions which can maipulate these conditions and make give them a favorable approach on the condition. Also the rings effects should never be exclusive so even if a player allready got one for him you still can get the ring and the effects the only thing which schould be exclusive is the victory though the last ring who ever gets the last one first wins the game.